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Fact vs Fiction: Border 2 and INS Khukri
The film depicts an encounter between an Indian naval frigate and a Pakistani submarine. The Indian ship is torpedoed, begins to sink—and in a final act of cinematic heroism, its captain destroys the enemy submarine before going down with his ship. This scene is not “creative liberty.”It is a complete distortion of history. And someone…
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Fact vs Fiction: Border 2 and The battle of Basantar
I’ve always had a problem with “historical” war films that freely mix facts with fiction and still market themselves as true stories. Creative liberty is fine. Intellectual dishonesty isn’t. Border (1997) worked despite its flaws. The music was iconic, the emotions landed, and most importantly, the film stayed focused on one battle — Longewala. Even…
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Kulbhushan Jadhav in Lyari: How ‘Dhurandhar’ Turned Pakistan’s Own Legal Dossier into a Cinematic Nightmare
The release of Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar in December 2025 has done more than just shatter box office records; it has ripped the scab off a festering wound in the Indo-Pak geopolitical narrative. While the film is being hailed as a cinematic powerhouse by millions, a specific circle of “intellectual” gatekeepers—the likes of Arfa Khanum Sherwani,…
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Dhurandhar: 5 Bollywood Myths Dismantled in 2025
For three decades, the Indian film industry was governed by a set of “unbreakable” rules. We were told that the audience had a short attention span, that certain faces were mandatory for success, and that “masala” was the only language the masses understood. Then came December 2025. Then came Dhurandhar. Aditya Dhar’s 3.5-hour geopolitical epic…
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Why Dawood Ibrahim Cannot Be the Bade Sahab of Dhurandhar? Tracing Pakistan’s Military History!
The shadowy figure known only as “Bade Sahab” is the central, unseen tormentor of the film Dhurandhar. He is the ultimate puppet master who connects the street-level drug trade of Karachi to the highest echelons of state-sponsored terror. The puzzle of his identity is brilliantly complicated by the film’s narrative structure, which suggests a constant,…
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The Cultural Trauma of Dhurandhar: Why ‘Arfa Khanum’ Can’t Reconcile with the New Reality
The hysterical backlash against Dhurandhar has nothing to do with “politics” or even “Pakistan-bashing.” It’s a full-blown cultural trauma for a particular generation of commentators—the ones personified by the classic ‘Arfa Khanum’ archetype. She’s not critiquing a movie. She’s mourning. Mourning the sudden, violent death of the comforting moral universe that Bollywood spent decades constructing,…
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Dhurandhar—The 3.5-Hour Epic That is Filling Theaters in the UK: A Non-Spoiler Review
I went into this film armed with the relentless barrage of negative chatter: jingoism, toxic masculinity, excessive violence, propaganda, too long. Every review seemed determined to warn me off. But I watch every Hindi film that screens here in Portsmouth, UK, and this one was different. For the first time in years, the theater was…
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The Sham of Indian Feminism: Absent from Cricket’s Triumph, Obsessed with Selective Outrage
The ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2025 was nothing short of a national epiphany. On November 2, 2025, in a finale that gripped the country like no other, the Indian women’s team etched their name in golden letters by winning their first-ever World Cup title, defeating a resilient South African side in a nail-biting contest…
Infinite Sea of Opportunities 